Director: Wes Craven
Rating: 10 out of 10
A pantheon film, for sure. And, dammit, this is a HORROR FILM. It ranks #1 on my list of movies that scared the ever-loving shit out of me until a much later age than I would care to admit. I've seen it about 20 times, and to be honest, it's still scary to me. The above image of the outsretched arms of our burned, sadistic antagonist always ranks as one of the scariest moments in cinema history. It continues with a series of iconic moments that helped define the genre.
Conceptually, this film is utterly brilliant. A group of teenagers are having haunting nightmares featuring the same burned, knife-fingered, sweater adorned ghoul. After one of them is murdered by the madman during her dream, in quite possibly the most iconic scene in the film, the kids start to realize the situation: die in your dream, die in real life. How fantastic is that? A human being is most vulnerable while they are unconsciously asleep. While you're asleep you're at the mercy of your subconscious, and that's just what Wes Craven invades. Fuck him, I say.
Iconic scenes? How about Freddy's face pressing through the wall above Nancy's bed, the aforementioned arm sequence, dragging Tina up the wall and across the ceiling, Tina in a body-bag in the school hallway, and the blood geyser after Glenn gets pulled into his bed, just to name a few. They're all famous sequences, all creepy as hell, and all done without the use of CGI. The face press scene in this is 1000x creepier looking than the updated CGI version. Nuff said.
Of course, this introduced the world to one of the mose famous villains ever, Mr. Fred Krueger. The AFI ranked him #40 on their list of the top villains in American cinematic history, and he's at his most terrifying in this first installment. I haven't seen part 4 or part 5 of the series, where Freddy got the most one-liners and started cracking jokes. But I have seen this, Freddy's Revenge (infamously homo-erotic), The Dream Warriors (Craven's involvement is obvious, best sequel), Freddy's Dead (simply awful), and New Nightmare (another Craven addition, another brilliant concept).
The real terror of the film comes in the form of atmosphere. Craven blends reality and the surrealness of the dream sequences so seamlessly that you're never quite sure when you've entered into a dream....until it's too late. Unfortunately, this is what the remake got wrong. They think by adding a quick shot of Freddy, accompanied by a loud sound, then followed by the character waking up out of a dream, is scary. No, fellas. Realizing you're in the dream too late, then not being able to get out of it.....that's scary.
For the most part, we have some pretty smart kids in this film. During Tina's fatal dream sequence, there's the obligatory bit where she goes out into the dark in her night gown uttering "Who's there?" But when she goes outside to investigate it's more like a "alright, you son-of-a-bitch, I'm gonna find out who you are" kind of mentality. Not just a stupid girl who doesn't know any better than to check out a strange noise in the middle of the night. The subtext of the divide between parents and their kids is also pretty unique in this. The kids are more savy, willing to believe these things are real and want to deal with it, while the parents just tell the kids to get some sleep, repeatedly. There's a deep, dark secret these parents are hiding, and it's causing their kids to die one-by-one. I like the idea that Nancy's parents are divorced and her mother is an alcoholic. It feels like the secret they're hiding caused the split in their marriage and most likely contributed to Nancy's mom's alcoholism.
Ok, I'm babbling about this film. I could seriously dissect it for hours on end, but I'm going to stop. I love it.
Next: Candyman
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